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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
July/August 2004

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SHOULD ANYONE BE DENIED COMMUNION?

Quite a little Catholic moment we're having in America. The priest abuse scandal. The Passion of the Christ, made by Catholic Mel Gibson. And now the question of whether some Catholics -- notably, pro-choice lawmakers (John Kerry) -- can be, or ought to be, denied communion. Bravo to America magazine for running opposing articles on this subject, and one of them from the first mover in this particular debate, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke. Opposing Burke was the Reverend John P. Beal, Associate Professor of the School of Canon Law at Catholic University.

Beal spent his column parsing Canon 915, which states in part, "Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persisting in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion." Catholic politicians who support pro-choice legislation, Beal argued, are certainly not excommunicated or interdicted. Further, they cannot be accused of grave sin with any certitude, do not fit the term "manifest" as it is traditionally understood, and should only be said to be "obstinately persisting" after the bishops have reached out to educate and persuade. Denying communion, to him, looks like giving up.

Burke, after noting that he made his first statements on this matter only after inviting Catholic politicians to meet with him on the matter, takes on Beal's argument in one paragraph: "Finally, some have questioned whether a Catholic politician's public departure from the church's teaching on the inviolability of human life constitutes manifest grave sin. Certainly procuring an abortion is "a gravely sinful act." Supporting legislation that provides for procured abortion is participation in a gravely sinful act, what the church's moral teaching calls formal cooperation. The natural and divinely revealed moral law forbids this cooperation in the taking of an innocent life. Therefore a Catholic politician who supports or votes for laws that are unjust, because they permit procured abortion, persists in a gravely sinful act."

Burke also argued that such politicians were likely to be the cause of serious scandal, obscuring the evil of the act by their legal support.

Critics have accused Burke and his ilk of politicizing the Eucharist. I think the politicians have brought politics to the Eucharist. Who went into politics, then decided to submerge their "personal morality" for political ends? (California's Senator, Barbara Boxer, does not seem to have had any trouble mixing her personal and political beliefs on the question of abortion, regardless of the fact that there are more than a few pro-life Californians.) These politicians have issued the challenge, saying they could be Catholics in good standing and still flout the Church's teaching in their political lives. Now, some bishops have accepted that challenge.

Others have said that the bishops risk making themselves irrelevant, hollering about this or that internecine squabble while the world passes them by. So be it -- "in season, out of season...." If that's the consequence of taking a stand to protect Jesus in the sacrament from defilement, well, there are worse things than political irrelevance. "Sacrilege" is still on the books. The Catechism calls it a "grave sin, especially when committed against the Eucharist."

Abortion is not just any sin. Procuring an abortion incurs automatic excommunication. The Eucharist is not just any sacrament. It is, says the Catechism, "the source and summit of the Christian life." Simply, it is Christ. We call it "Holy Communion, because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his body and blood to form a single body."

I don't expect Kerry to change his mind and stop receiving. I do wish he would acknowledge that when he receives Communion, he's not affirming his belonging to the institutional Church. He is meeting Jesus. It is Jesus with whom he is communing. The act makes a statement -- "I make myself one with you, Lord." I want him to say he feels comfortable making that statement, that he means it when he receives.

I keep thinking of the great and canny politician Saint Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. His daughter Meg begs him to take an oath without meaning it. More responds, "What is an oath but words we say to God?" She protests, and More explains himself, "When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then -- he needn't hope to find himself again."

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